When the three Gaither sisters return to Brooklyn, and their dad and grandmother, after spending the summer with their mother in Berkeley, they encounter a little resistance to their newfound Power To The People ideology. Their grandmother, Big Ma, scolds them for “causing a grand Negro spectacle for all the world to see.” Their father is perky and chipper — and in love with a woman he introduces as Miss Marva Hendrix. Delphine, the narrator, isn’t sure how she feels about that.

“My papa was thirty-two and acting like a teenager,” she says. “The hippies were right. You can’t trust anyone over thirty.”

But Uncle Darnell isn’t as much fun as he used to be, napping all the time during the day and leaving at night to hang out with friends that Big Ma doesn’t like. When the girls work to earn money for tickets to see the increasingly hot Jackson Five, they can hardly wait for the show. But then life throws them a few curve balls.

Delphine reports on the goings-on to her mother back in Berkeley, who writes back with a mysterious postscript: “P.S. Be Eleven.” She writes that even after Delphine turns 12! But Delphine’s mother isn’t losing track of her girl; far from it. “Time turns always, Delphine,” she writes. “Don’t push it.”